BLACK DIAMONDS
On what was once National Coal Board land,
at the edge of the former pit village
are car show rooms and a builders’ merchant –
like the outskirts of a provincial town
except for the slag heap, bull-dozed on top
and planted with birches, that looms above
the preserved pit head. Beyond the village
is pasture, and then a walled estate
with a modest late Georgian mansion,
open daily to the paying public,
set back above a shallow valley.
At the edge of this pastoral landscape,
a November sun, low in a misty sky,
turns the slag heap into a tumulus
and the winding gear into a prayer wheel –
a revolution’s relics. Through the vale
a brook, ice age vestige, meanders.
In its bed of pale silty clay, beneath
autumn leaves, are coal shards.
Ian Craine
March 27, 2026Lovely poem. Winding gear becomes a prayer wheel. Wonderful
John Plummer
March 29, 2026Forgive some nostalgic indulgence spun from your ‘Black Diamonds’. I spent my sixth form years in South Wales and frequently toured the tortured valleys for sports fixtures or adventure, usually by minibus. Coal was still mined in massive quantities but many places were losing their livelihoods by then. The legendary strength of the communities withstood the grinding poverty, and the relentless threats above and below ground. Song, chapel and rugby generated deep, exclusive pride. Somehow I found a lovely (but troubled) girlfriend from near Caerphilly. Once we travelled by train north to Caerphilly to find how her homeland felt. But she was so terrified of her father having to meet a callow English boy, from the enemy nation where he burnt coal but never dug it. Aberfan was allowed to happen by the captains of Coal just after I had returned home. The landscapes now smother the tragedies but the sadness lingers.